Minister for border security and asylum Anna Turley added: “This seizure of 25 small boats delivers yet another blow to the evil smuggling gangs.
“Disruptions to supply lines like these are happening more than ever before as we bear down on the illegal and dangerous crossings.”
The NCA said about 100 investigations into gangs involved in organisation immigration crime were ongoing.
Adam Berry, branch commander for the alternative disruption team, confirmed it was the first time it had made a seizure of air freight in the UK.
“These boats are so dangerous,” he said. “We have sadly seen so many deaths in the Channel recently, and it’s because they are just purely constructed to get across as cheaply and as flimsily as possible.
“What we can see when we get the boats and we blow the boats up is that there’s distinctive shapes and types of them.
“There’s a distinctive transom – which is the bit where the engine sits – and then you’ve got how many chambers they are, the construction of them and other key bits.
“We can look at boats that have arrived and we can compare them to these and prove that these boats are the exact boats that we have seen in the Channel.”
